Ghostwritten (20 page)

Forgive the shoddy workmanship. I’m an amateur. Now, let me pour the tea.”

“Thank you. You must be delighted. All these pilgrims come to visit your temple.”

The monk sighed. “Very few of them are pilgrims. Most don’t even bother entering the temple.”

“Then why do they come all the way to the Holy Mountain?”

“Because it’s somewhere to drive their cars. Because lots of other people come here. Because the government has designated us a National Treasure.”

“At least the Party has stopped persecuting you.”

“Only because it pays better to tax us.”

A passerby whistled a song that was both happy and sad. I heard a brush sweeping.

“I’ve come here about my father,” I began.

The monk listened gravely, nodding from time to time as I told my story. “You were right to come. Your father’s soul is still too burdened to leave this world. Come with me into the temple. There’s a quiet altar to one side, safe from the tourists’ flashbulbs. We shall light some incense together, and I shall perform the necessary rites. Then I shall see about finding you a bed for the night. Our hospitality is spartan, but sincere. Like yours.”

The monk showed me back to the great doorway the morning after. Another day lost in fog.

“How much?” I felt inside my shawl for my money bag.

“Nothing.” He touched my arm respectfully. “All your life you’ve filled the bellies of errant monks when their only food was pebbles. When the time comes, I’ll see to it that your funeral rites are taken care of.”

Kindness always makes me weep. I don’t know why. “But even monks have to eat.”

He gestured into the noisy fog. Lights blinked on and off. Dim buses growled. “Let them feed us.”

I bowed deeply, and when I looked up again he had gone. Only his smile remained. Walking away to the downbound path, I caught sight of Brain, lugging a bucket of gravel up a ladder. His face was bruised and cut. Men, honestly. A group of girls ran screaming and laughing across the square, barely avoiding me. The monk was right: there was nothing holy here any more. The holy places were having to hide deeper, and higher.

A man came to see me, at my Tea Shack. He said he was from the Party newspaper, and that he wanted to write a story about me. I asked him the name of his story.

“ ‘Seventy Years of Socialist Entrepreneurialism.’ ”

“Seventy Years of What?”

His camera flashed in my face. I saw phoenix feathers, even when I closed my eyes.

“Socialist Entrepreneurialism.”

“Those are young ’uns’ words. Ask the young ’uns about it.”

“No, madam,” he pushed on, standing back a few yards and aiming his camera at my Tea Shack. Flash! “I’ve done my homework. You were a pioneer, really. There’s money to be made out of the Holy Mountain, but you were among the first to see the opportunity, and you’re still here. Remarkable, really. You are the Granny That Lays the Golden Eggs. That would be a good subtitle!”

It was true that during the summer months the path had become crowded with climbers. Every few steps was a Tea Shack, a Noodle Stall, or a Hamburger Stand—I tasted one once, foreign muck! I was hungry again less than an hour afterwards. Clustered around every shrine was a crowd of tables selling plastic bags and bottles that littered the path higher up.

“I’m not a pioneer,” I insisted. “I lived here because I never had any choice. As for making money, the Party sent people to smash my Tea Shack because I made money.”

“No they didn’t. You’re old, and you’re quite mistaken. The Party has always encouraged fair trade. Now, I know you have stories that will interest my readers.”

“It’s not my job to interest your readers! It’s my job to serve
noodles and tea! If you really want something interesting to write about, write about my Tree! It’s five trees in one, you know. Almonds, hazelnuts, persimmons, quinces, and apples. ‘The Bountiful Tree.’ That’s a better name for your story, don’t you think?”

“Five trees in one,” repeated the newspaper man.

“I admit, the apples are tart. But that’s nothing. The Tree talks!”

“Really?”

He left soon afterwards. He wrote his stupid story, anyway, inventing my every word. A monk read it out to me. Apparently I had always admired Deng Xiaoping’s enlightened leadership. I’d never even heard of Tiananmen Square, but apparently I believed the authorities responded in the only possible way.

I added “writers” to my list of people not to trust. They make everything up.

“Do you know who I am?”

I open my eyes.

The leaf shadows of my Tree dapple her beautiful face.

“The lilies in your hair, my darling, they suited you. Thank you for your letter. It came just the other day. A monk read it to me.”

She smiled the way she does in the photograph.

“This is your
great
-granddaughter,” says my niece, as though I’m making a mistake.

My niece is the mistaken one, but I’m too tired to explain the nature of yesterdays.

“Have you returned to China for good, my darling?”

“Yes. Hong Kong is China now, anyway. But yes.”

There is pride in my niece’s voice. “Your great-granddaughter has done very well for herself, Aunt. She’s bought a hotel and restaurant in the Village. There’s a spotlight on the roof that turns around and around, all through the night. All the rich people from the city come there to stay. A film star stayed only last week. She’s had a lot of good offers of marriage—even the local Party Chief wants her hand.”

My heart curls up, warm, like a tame mountain cat in the sun.
My daughter will honor me as an ancestor, and bury me on the Holy Mountain, facing the sea. “I’ve never seen the sea, but they say Hong Kong is paved with gold.”

She laughs, a pretty laugh. I laugh, too, to see her laughing, even though it makes my ribs ache and ache.

“You can find a lot of things on Hong Kong’s pavements, but not much gold. My employer died. A foreigner, a lawyer with a big company, he was extremely wealthy. He was very generous to me in his will.”

With the intuition of an old dying woman, I know she isn’t telling the whole truth.

With the certainty of an old dying woman, I know it’s not the truth that much matters.

I hear my daughter and niece making tea downstairs. I close my eyes, and hear ivory hooves.

A ribbon of smoke uncoils as it disappears, up, up, and up.

THE GRASSLANDS ROSE and fell past the train, years upon years of them.

Sometimes the train passed settlements of the round tents that Caspar’s guidebook called
gers
. Horses grazed, old men squatted on their haunches, smoking pipes. Vicious-looking dogs barked at the train, and children watched as we passed. They never returned Caspar’s wave, they just looked on, like their grandfathers. Telegraph poles lined the track, forking off to vanish over the restless horizon. The large sky made Caspar think of the land where he had grown up, somewhere called Zetland. Caspar was feeling lonely and homesick. I felt no anticipation, just endlessness.

The Great Wall was many hours behind us now.

A far-flung, trackless country in which to hunt myself.

Sharing our compartment was a pair of giant belchers from Austria who drank vodka by the pint and told flatulent jokes to one another in German, a language I had learned from Caspar two weeks before. They were betting sheaves of Mongolian currency—togrugs—on a card game called cribbage one of them had learned from a Welshman in Shanghai, and swearing multicolored oaths. In the top bunk sat an Australian girl called Sherry, immersed in
War and Peace
. Caspar had been an agronomist at university before dropping out and had never read any Tolstoy. I caught him wishing he had, though not for literary reasons. A Swede from the next compartment invited himself in from time to time to regale Caspar with stories of being ripped off in China. He bored us both, and even Caspar’s sympathies were with the Chinese.
Also in the Swede’s compartment was a middle-aged Irish woman who either gazed out of the window or wrote numbers in a black notebook. In the other neighboring compartment was a team of four Israelis—two girlfriends and their boyfriends. Other than chatting politely with Caspar about hostel prices in Xi’an and Beijing, and the new bursts of violence in Palestine, they kept themselves to themselves.

Night stole over the land again, dissolving it in shadows and blue. Every ten or twenty miles tongues of campfire licked the darkness.

Caspar’s mental clock was several hours out, so he decided to turn in. I could have adjusted it for him, but I decided to let him sleep. He went to the toilet, splashed water over his face, and cleaned his teeth with water he disinfected in a bottle with iodine. Sherry was outside our compartment when he came back, her face pressed against the glass. Caspar thought, How beautiful. “Hello,” he said.

“Hello.” Sherry’s eyes turned towards my host.

“How’s the
War and Peace?
I have to admit, I’ve never read any Russians.”

“Long.”

“What’s it about?”

“Why things happen the way they do.”

“And why do things happen the way they do?”

“I don’t know, yet. It’s
very
long.” She watched her breath mist up the window. “Look at it. All this space, and almost no people in it. It almost reminds me of home.”

Caspar joined her at the window. After a mile had passed: “Why are you here?”

She thought for a while. “It’s the last place, y’know? Lost in the middle of Asia, not in the east, not in the west. ‘Lost as Mongolia,’ it could be an expression. How about you?”

Some drunk Russians up the corridor groaned with laughter.

“I don’t really know. I was on my way to Laos, when this impulse just came over me. I told myself there was nothing here, but I couldn’t fight it. Mongolia! I’ve never even thought about the place. Maybe I smoked too much pot at Lake Dal.”

A half-naked Chinese toddler ran up the corridor, making a zun-zun noise which may have been a helicopter, or maybe a horse.

“How long have you been traveling?” asked Caspar, not wanting the conversation to lag.

“Ten months. You?”

“Three years, this May.”

“Three years! Oath, you
are
a terminal case!” Sherry’s face turned into a huge yawn. “Sorry, I’m bushed. Being cooped up doing nothing is exhausting work. Do you think our Austrian friends have shut up the casino for the night?”

“I only hope they have shut up the joke factory. You don’t know how lucky you are, not speaking German.”

Back in their compartment, the Austrians were snoring in stereo. Sherry bolted the door. The gentle sway of the train lulled Caspar towards sleep. He was thinking about Sherry.

Sherry peered over the bunk above him. “Do you know a good bedtime story?”

Caspar was not a natural storyteller, so I stepped in. “I know one story. It’s a Mongolian story. Well, not so much a story as a sort of legend.”

“I’d love to hear it,” Sherry smiled, and Caspar’s heart missed a gear.

There are three who think about the fate of the world.

First there is the crane. See how lightly he treads, picking his way between the rocks in the river? Tossing and tilting back his head. The crane believes that if he takes just one heavy step, the mountains will collapse and the ground will quiver and trees that have stood for a thousand years will tumble.

Second, the locust. All day the locust sits on a pebble, thinking that one day the flood will come and deluge the world, and all living things will be lost in the churn and the froth and black waves. That is why the locust keeps such a watchful eye on the high peaks, and the rain clouds that might be gathering there.

Third, the bat. The bat believes that the sky may fall and shatter, and all living things die. Thus the bat dangles from a high
place, fluttering up to the sky, and down to the ground, and up to the sky again, checking that all is well.

That was the story, way back at the beginning.

Sherry had fallen asleep, and Caspar wondered for a moment where this story had come from. I closed his mind and nudged it towards sleep. I watched his dreams come and go for a little while. There was a dream about defending a gothic palace built on sand flats with pool cues, and one about his sister and niece. His father entered the dream, pushing a motorbike down the corridor of the Trans-Siberian express with a sidecar full of money that kept blowing away. Drunk and demanding as ever, he asked Caspar what the devil he thought he was playing at, and insisted that Caspar still had some very important videotapes. Caspar had become a half-naked little boy and knew nothing about them.

My own infancy was spent at the foot of the Holy Mountain. There was a dimness, which I later learned lasted many years. It took me that long to learn how to remember. I imagine a bird beginning as an “I.” Slowly, the bird understands that it is a thing different from the “It” of its shell. The bird perceives its containment, and as its sensory organs begin to function it becomes aware of light and dark, cold and heat. As sensation sharpens, it seeks to break out. Then one day, it starts to struggle against the gluey gel and brittle walls, and cannot stop until it is out and alone in the vertiginous world, made of wonder, and fear, and colors, made of unknown things.

But even back then, I was wondering: why am I alone?

The sun woke Caspar. He had dried tears in his eyes and his mouth tasted of watch straps. He badly wished he had some fresh fruit to eat. And the Austrians had already beaten him to the bathroom. He slid out of bed, and we saw Sherry was meditating. Caspar pulled on his jeans and tried to slip out of the compartment without disturbing her.

“Good morning, and welcome to Sunny Mongolia,” Sherry murmured. “We get there in three hours.”

“Sorry I disturbed you,” said Caspar.

“You didn’t. And if you look in that plastic bag hanging off the coat hook, you should find some pears. Have one for breakfast.”

“So,” said Sherry, four hours later. “Grand Central Station, Ulan Bator.”